Horse Riding in all Seasons in Scotland

It has been a bit of a month for me behind the scenes here, and life has thrown me an interesting 'opportunity' and with it everything that seemed part of my normal life has been temporarily sucked up into a vortex of application forms, legals and business admin. None of this has anything to do with horses of course, or art, which is quite my point. It's just not the sort of stuff that I think any of you tune in for, so I went uncharacteristically 'quiet'. Me, the out and out blether I am........not a peep. SShhhhh!So, this is my backfill with photos post....

.....hello Merlyn! My last ride on Merlyn was weeks ago, he has had a cut leg ever since, but we will see each other again tomorrow. Such a sweet face when he is in a nice mood. I only ever take a photo after we ride, he is much less grumpy then....

....and it was, your absolutely typical Scottish miserable driech day.....tell me how are you supposed to find a horse in a field that you can't even see to the other side of?

......we could hardly see 20 feet infront of ourselves, frankly a little bit daft as we had no high vis gear on at all. I have mentioned before he is so black it is like a cloak of invisibilty.....big wet black ears and a mane blowing in the wild wind. And to think Ali called me a fair weather rider....

.....here is the view from Merlyn's stable. Yes, I know, he is a lucky horse to live in bonny Scotland with a view like that. You are thinking "It even looks beautiful in the rain"....look out at it every day and your perception will start to change....

...aaah, now this is more like it, may you all have weather like this when you visit Scotland. Fantastic day.....a three hour hack at Craigengellan in glorious September sunshine the whole way....

 

....three hours is a long time....we go over the hills and far away

 

....gate locked......ah, which way now?

  



....if we could just bottle up the sunshine....is this even on the same planet as my earlier photo?

.....idyllic..... looking out over the water....

....on the road back home, all happy and tired....

 

.....last photo opportunities ...



......and home, big stretch Trio!

What a hack, but guess what, you guys are going to freak.......I never took a photo of the Minature Shetland mare and foal! Ooops. 



SEA submission time and Dunlop Fayre

It is looking to be an extremely busy week ahead for me.

It is the week of the Society of Equestrian Artists submission deadline for the annual show later this Summer. This is my first year as a Friend of the SEA and I am putting the finishing touches to two paintings to submit for the show. I am excited at the opportunity but also nervous as to whether the work will be accepted but at least I will know in a few weeks as to whether it makes the first cut on the basis of the digital images I submit ....fingers crossed.

Closer to home, I have had the opportunity to show at Dunlop Town Fair on Saturday 4th June. I am completely new to the 'fair' market so am now likely to be in a flap for much of the week looking for easels, table covers, printing leaflets, framing work, and chasing down some examples that I left at Easterton and Craigengellan Stables earlier in the month. I am not sure whether to take some thing to work on while at the fair, if people like to see you 'at work'. If there are any local followers - that would be friends and family  - do come and see me!

On the riding front things are quieter. My Monday with Merlyn (spelt with a Y for luck, I now learn having spelt with an I for weeks) was off due to 100 mph gusts and heavy rain. I know my fairwether luck was due to run out.  Ah, the Scottish Summer....what's not to love?

Return of the Happy Hacker

Finally today, after many months of 'thinking about it' I made it out today on a hack. This is a big moment and marks the return of the happy hacker.

You see for many years hacking was horse riding to me...the schooling stuff was a means to an end, thing that just happened the weeks in between ..... I swear I learned to canter while out pony trekking, with a yell over a shoulder of 'just hang on to the front of the saddle and you'll be fine'. It was not a collected composed experience, and I am sure I am still trying to right bad habits in the school learned through just getting on with it in big open spaces.


photo by Graham Lewis on Flickr
Creative Commons 2.0

 As a child I lived for a few years in Oban in Argyll. We spent a lot of time driving the hundred miles back and forth to Glasgow so that less adapted family could get a fix of city life.

Not for me the city (in those days)  I spent the long drive back to Oban gazing out the window fixated with the countryside.

The drive up to Argyll is dramatic and beautiful, changing through hills and forests to bare hillsides of falling shale where trees had been felled. The whole drive the eight year old me imagined myself riding, as we whizzed past the fields and the fences, I saw every inch of the landscape was there to be ridden in my imagination - cantering across, ditches, fences, my mind raced on horseback the whole journey back home. Hacking held no fear in those days.

Then things changed. I had my incident on the flighty racehorse many years back, and stayed away from horses a long while after. When I came back to riding a couple of years ago, all I wanted to do was go on a hack, still no real sense of fear. But when I finally did all changed.

The minute we got into an open field and somewhere in my subconscious, everything to do with Sam, that feeling of no control came back to me. A switch flicked, the colour drained from my face and my seat became electric. Needless to the sense of alarm in my whole body quickly got through to the horse, and I had a hack fraught with bucking, bolting and unplanned gallops. That was a year ago and I rode the painful journey back to the stables, my hands blistered with the battle of wills that had ensued, dismounted with relief to have my life in my hands. I swore as I sat quaking for 2 hours afterwards I would be happy never to go out on a hack again in my life.


Craigengillan Horses

Well the eight year old girl inside me just wouldn't let it lie, not at all happy with the notion that you could close that happy chapter.

Today marks the moment when the return of the childhood exhilaration of horse riding in through the open country, either in reality of just imagined, was once again tangible.

The scenery was wonderful through my beautiful Craigengillan Estate. My trusty stead, Trio, a beautiful grey, in need of just the right amount of encouragement to keep up as we cantered through the woodland path and only got slightly twitchy at a creaking tree - isn't it peculiar the things that set them off ? And so with delight my riding friend Jane and I will make the short jaunt to Craigengellan again for great riding, lovely scenery and good natured horses again, very, very soon!